Free Republic

President Obama cautioned Black Lives Matter activists against going too far, saying that attacks on police and overheated, irrational rhetoric undermine their cause. "Whenever those of us who are concerned about failures of the criminal justice system attack police, you are doing a disservice to the cause," Obama said in remarks to reporters in Spain, where he is traveling. "Any violence directed at police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted," he said. Even rhetorically, if we paint police with a broad brush, or "say things that are stupid or imprudent," it risks losing ground for the...

Link to FULL PRESS CONFERENCE - Philip Haney When recently retired DHS frontline officer and intelligence expert Philip Haney bravely tried to say something about the people and organizations that threatened the nation, his intelligence information was eliminated, and he was investigated by the very agency assigned to protect the country. The national campaign by the DHS to raise public awareness of terrorism and terrorism-related crime known as If You See Something, Say Something effectively has become If You See Something, Say Nothing. In this well-documented, first-person account of his unique service with DHS, Haney shows why it's imperative that...

By fall 1959, a number of CORONA photo-reconnaissance spacecraft had already been launched under cover of the Discoverer program, but none had operated successfully. Program officials became concerned that the Agena spacecraft that carried CORONA might be vulnerable to tracking by Soviet radars, or possibly even deliberate electronic interference. They did not think this explained CORONA’s early string of failures, but it was a possibility they worried about. At the time, Harold Willis was working in the Office of ELINT located at CIA Headquarters when CORONA officials briefed him about their program and told him about their concerns. Willis also...

The macaw has a brain the size of an unshelled walnut, while the macaque monkey has a brain about the size of a lemon. Nevertheless, the macaw has more neurons in its forebrain -- the portion of the brain associated with intelligent behavior -- than the macaque. That is one of the surprising results of the first study to systematically measure the number of neurons in the brains of more than two dozen species of birds ranging in size from the tiny zebra finch to the six-foot-tall emu, which found that they consistently have more neurons packed into their small...

In 2001 a group of Castroite spies in south Florida known as the Wasp Network were convicted of charges ranging from espionage to conspiracy to commit murder (of U.S. citizens.) They were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years to two life sentences. According to the FBI’s affidavit, the charges against these KGB-trained Communist spies included: • Compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers and that of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West.• Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command.This past April, on Obama’s orders,...

'); } //--> The peahen (at left) and the peacock (at right). The peacock's elaborate plumage and many other similar animal ornaments posed a troubling difficulty for Charles Darwin in his development of the theory of evolution, since they seemed to have no value for survival. The peacocks that were everywhere present in English gardens were a frustrating and ever-present reminder of the difficulty. "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail", Darwin wrote, "whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!". Darwin solved the problem with his theory of sexual selection, which posits that such ornaments evolved...

WASHINGTON: The US President's schedule on any given morning includes a confidential Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) at 9 am before he embarks on the day's (mostly) public engagements. Presented usually by the Director of National Intelligence, the PDB fuses intelligence from various spy agencies (CIA, DIA, NSA etc), much of it obtained through "sigint" (signal intelligence) and "'technical" means (euphemism for bugging, electronic surveillance etc), to give the President a head's up on vital national security issues - from nuclear advances in countries such as Pakistan, North Korea and Iran to negotiating positions of China, India, and other majors at...

Army Captain Bradley Grimm, currently based in Iraq, cracked the plot by gleaning crucial details from seized documents. A US Army captain in Iraq helped crack a plot to bomb a Danish school after gleaning crucial details from documents recovered from extremists, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

What’s also interesting is how the smart people lied differently. The low-intelligence liars overwhelmingly went big — most of them claimed they rolled a six, which gave them the highest payoff. But the high-intelligence liars were more modest. They were more likely to lie and say they rolled a four or a five. There are two mysteries here. First, why were the less intelligent people more likely to lie? Second, why were the smarter liars so sheepish about going for the maximum payoff? Ruffle and Tobol believe that more intelligent people may be more cautious about the consequences of lying....

(2nd LD) N.K. military intelligence officer defected to S. Korea last year: Seoul 2016/04/11 14:23 (ATTN: UPDATES with more info in paras 6, 12, 15-17) SEOUL, April 11 (Yonhap) -- A ranking North Korean military officer in charge of conducting intelligence operations defected to South Korea last year, Seoul's defense ministry said Monday, as the North's leader is tightening his grip on the regime. A North Korean senior colonel, whose name has been withheld, defected in 2015 after working at the North's reconnaissance bureau tasked with carrying out espionage missions against the South, the ministry said. "(The North Korean military...

CIA Director John Brennan told NBC News in an exclusive interview that his agency will not engage in harsh "enhanced interrogation" practices, including waterboarding, which critics call torture — even if ordered to by a future president. "I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure," Brennan said. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has said that if elected president, he'd authorize the use of waterboarding which was banned in 2009. Trump said the technique, considered torture under international law, and other methods he characterized as "a...

Big Brother is alive and well and will remove from the playing field anyone who fails to follow accepted political policy. Obama doesn’t need to worry about negative stories if his followers can stop criticism by low level analysts and flush it down the memory hole. The Daily Beast recently reported that U.S. Central Command forced two senior intelligence analysts out of their jobs because they told the truth about U.S. backed rebel groups in Syria. The analysts had expressed doubts about the rebel’s capability and commitment to U.S. objectives in the region. Their reports placed them at odds with...

The growing scandal over cooked ISIS intelligence just got much worse. Now, analysts are saying they’re being forced out for not toeing the Obama administration’s line on the war. Two senior intelligence analysts at U.S. Central Command say the military has forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, three sources with knowledge of their claim told The Daily Beast. It’s the first known instance of possible reprisals against CENTCOM personnel after analysts accused their bosses of manipulating intelligence reports about the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in order to paint a...

Attack in subway likely also known in advance by Belgian and Western agencies; attack plan was formulated at de-facto ISIS capital of Raqqa, in Syria. Belgium ignored Turkish warning about Brussels attacker, Erdogan says Brussels awakens to a new reality: Soldiers on the streets, heavy security on metro Belgium prosecutor confirms brothers were suicide bombers After Brussels, will Europe finally crack down on terror Israel-style?

If Western countries were ever in denial about their citizens going abroad to fight alongside the Islamic State, as the old saying goes, “The devil is in the detail.” Details- lots and lots of personal details of at least 22,000 ISIS recruits who have joined the terror organization in Syria and Iraq from 51 countries including the U.S., have been leaked in a series of documents. The information, including extremists’ names, dates of birth, citizenship, phone numbers, addresses and even blood types, comes from forms that serve as admission applications foreign fighters are obligated to fill out before they are...

Are Robots are Coming of Age? “New robot shows off human-like qualities” says the headline. The media think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. My dearest is excited too: finally, she will no longer have to remind me of my chores, that the (yet to be acquired super-duper) robot with its well-programmed memory and a mind of its own will perform without being asked—and even without any snarky comments on the side. And here comes the latest news: “Artificial intelligence, human brain to merge in the 2030s, says futurist Kurzweil.” I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work but...

We all know the president wants to close Guantanamo Bay, the plans for which how that will be achieved are expected this month, but what happens if we continue to nab more Islamic extremists? For now, the interrogations occur on naval ships and the prisoners are transferred to other nations' legal systems, or they're brought here to be tried in our court system. That's including military commissions, according to the Associated Press. Yet, this lack of clarity on what to do if we see an uptick in captured terrorists has legal wonks and national security officials unnerved: "If you're going to...

So … what has transpired over the last 800 days or so in the national-security arena? ISIS went from being the “jayvee team” to a terrorist quasi-state launching deadly attacks from the Sinai to the streets of Paris. Iran’s navy fired missiles at US Navy ships and captured ten American sailors. China built an island in the middle of the ocean and claimed the area as territorial waters. North Korea has … continued being North Korea.What did two top officials of naval intelligence know about any of these crises, and others? Probably nothing at all other than what appeared...

Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not so bright. Genes which make people intelligent have been discovered and scientists believe they could be manipulated to boost brain power. Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic, and the rest down to environmental factors such as schooling and friendship groups. But until now, nobody has been able to pin-point exactly which genes are responsible for better memory, attention, processing speed or reasoning skills. Now Imperial College...

John Kerry went to Moscow on Tuesday and was absolutely elated when he stumbled on a Dunkin Donuts:But America’s top diplomat didn’t travel halfway around the world just to get coffee (we don't think). He also met with Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin to discuss (what else?) Syria. You can get a decent idea of which side prevailed by taking a quick look at the following priceless image captured during a discussion between three of the world’s most powerful government officials:In short, Kerry ended up conceding once and for all that the fate of Bashar al-Assad has effectively been...